I reached Wisconsin this afternoon after picking up a pair of Marine Corps Hum Vs in Michigan. I'd been wanting to visit a 100 year old tobacconist shop in Kenosha called Andrea's that another pipe smoker had told me about.

I checked into a motel, dropped my trailer, and bobtailed down to Kenosha to visit the place. It wasn't what I expected at all. It's mostly a gift shop with one corner of the place dedicated to pipes, cigars, and tobaccos.

I mainly went there just to pick up a Zippo pipe lighter as my Xikar butane is almost useless outdoors in a breeze. I did select a Zippo and then spent some time looking at their pipes and tobaccos.

All of the tobaccos were their own blends, and almost all aromatics. I did find a basket with a few odd tins of tobaccos. Among them I found a tin of McClelland Frog Morton and a tin of McClelland Arcadia. I took them both as I had never tried either of them but had read good things about them. The Frog Morton is from 2007 and the Arcadia is from 2008. That's a good thing as pipe tobacco, like wine, improves with aging.

Among the pipes I found a couple of very nice Savinellis but my wallet tried to run and hide as I was looking at them so I instead selected a rather nice Comoy's Tradition at about half the price of the Savs. The bowl shape is called a "pot" and pots are known to be great smokers. I have another Comoy's I purchased several years ago, a Comet Churchwarden, and it has always been a good smoker so I felt pretty good about buying another Comoy's.

I really did just go in there for a lighter and nothing else. Really.

When I got back to the motel I tried the Frog Morton in the new pipe. It's very heavy on the Latakia, which I happen to like. I'll be keeping some of this stuff around as it's a very good smoke. I won't try the Arcadia until tomorrow morning as the Latakia flavor of the Frog Morton would make it hard to fairly judge the flavor of the Arcadia.